


Before Dusk

by karmula



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Exorcisms, Gen, Multi, Post-Canon, Rescue, Rescue Missions, Sacrifice, Self-Sacrifice, Sequel, Unofficial Sequel, Wendigo Hannah, exor!josh, exorJosh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-06 21:39:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 16,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5431748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karmula/pseuds/karmula
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just mere weeks after their horrifying experience, Sam and Mike, plagued by guilt and the unrelenting memories that haunt their dreams, decide to return - with as many of the gang as they can convince - to Blackwood Mountain with the objective of saving Josh. But Sam harbours a dark secret, and there will be a price to pay if their mission is to succeed. The question is: is it worth it? And how much of themselves will they lose in the process?</p><p>Alternatively: A fan's take on a possible Until Dawn sequel in which the gang ensures Josh's survival.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Choices

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anonissue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonissue/gifts).



> First of all, I just wanted to say Merry Christmas, if you celebrate it, and if not, then Happy Holidays/Yuletide to my lovely recipient! I hope I was Josh/Mike/Sam-centric enough for you, since that's the vibe I got from your request, and I hope you enjoy the story I wrote for you - and if not so much, that's okay and I'm sorry, I just hope you're having a wonderful holiday regardless. 
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters portrayed, nor do I claim to. All rights go to the creators of Until Dawn.

The air is thick, treacly, and Sam is stuck. It wraps itself around her, heavy, pressing down on her shoulders as if to crush her. The pressure weakens her knees, threatening to buckle them, and she is so hyper-aware of how heavy the air feels that she cannot remember why that would be bad, why she must avoid moving, only that she does. A cloying smell fills her nostrils, flared against the assault. The smell, no – the _stench_ – is indescribable, rotting and thick and bloody. It smelt like death, like a corpse risen from its grave.

Then, all at once, the air is feather-light again, the pressure that held her in place vanished, and she is falling. Then comes the sound, a sound which is high and keening and harsh, like nails on a chalkboard, and it is even worse than the smell and _fuck_ , how could that be possible? It pierces her eardrums, it pulverises her brain, sharp and deadly as a Samurai sword. Some kind of clear fluid dribbles from her right ear, which is throbbing madly.

Her knees hit wood, hard and unrelenting. Sparks of pain shoot up Sam’s thighs, her kneecaps screaming out in protest. When she cries out, flinching at the sensation, that banshee-scream comes again, reverberating through the air, burrowing its way into her brain like a maggot.

There are footsteps behind her, and what sounds like claws scrabbling on the floorboards, fast approaching. It is too late for her to freeze, so she stands up, ignoring the excruciating pain in her knees, and staggers forward, breaking into a run. Her heart pumps in her ringing ears, and her blood boils.

The screech comes again and again, from all sides now. A shadow looms over her and something rips at her shoulder, tearing it right out of its socket as it yanks her back. She falls to the floor, winded and paralysed.

That shrill, hoarse scream echoes in her mind as the gaunt face of the Wendigo appears above her, its lips, rotted away to little more than flaps of pale grey skin, almost _grinning_ in anticipation of digging into the fresh, warm flesh it has caught for itself.

And on its shoulder, in black ink, blurred and distorted as the skin it is embedded in has stretched and grown, is a butterfly.

 _“No!”_ she yells, shooting upright. “No, no, no, no, _no_ –”

Mike is off the floor and at her side in an instant. “Hey, Sam – hey!” He catches Sam’s wrists deftly as she swings her fists at him, her cries deteriorating into incoherent babble as her throat chokes up, hot tears streaming down her cheeks. “Sam, hey, it’s okay – it was a dream, it was a dream, it was just a dream…”

The room hums as the rest of the group – those that had been able to get to sleep in the first place, that is – awakens, rubbing their eyes and turning their heads in solemn pity. It is not as if they are unused to one or any of them waking in the middle of the night, jerked out of unconsciousness by some bad dream, but that does not make it any less harrowing each time it happens. These nightmares – occurring of late with more frequency than ever before, despite their therapists’ collective reassurances that their flashbacks would fade – served as a reminder every night of what they had been through, and such reminders were never welcome.

Sam is still sobbing, mumbling into her hands. Mike thinks that he even catches her say Josh’s name once before another wave breaks, bringing fresh tears with it.

“Come on,” he whispers, slipping an arm around her shaking shoulders and guiding her up off the bed. “Let’s go get you some coffee, okay?”

The eyes of their friends follow them out of the room, most of them sitting upright now, hugging their knees with their shoulders hunched. No one speaks; there is nothing to say.

*

The steamy smell of freshly brewed coffee, rich and dark, fills the room. Sam sits weakly in a chair at the kitchen table, hands wrapped so tightly around her empty mug that her knuckles are strained and white.

Outside, the moon is full and round, the sky scattered with stars. She used to love the night, used to stargaze for hours on end, happy just to sit and watch the void above in contented silence, reassured that her mistakes were not as catastrophic as they seemed, but now all it brings her is sadness and memories she aches to forget. She casts her gaze away, watching Mike instead as he brings the coffeepot to the table.

“You don’t have to do this,” she says as he pours her a cup, wishing her voice didn’t sound so hoarse, that it didn’t tremble even as she spoke the words. “I can take care of myself.” She laughs half-heartedly, flexing her biceps. “I’m a big, strong girl, see?”

“I know you can. It’s not about that,” Mike sighs, pouring a second cup for himself and collapsing into a chair beside her. “It’s about taking care of each _other_.” He reaches out a hand, places it over hers and squeezes gently. His palms are rough, calloused, but warm, soothing. Not at all unpleasant. “It’s the only way I know to make sure we all survive.”

He’s right, and she knows it. It’s why none of them have slept a night alone since that night on Blackwood Mountain, why they’ve taken it in turns crashing in sleeping bags on the floor of each other’s places instead of sleeping in their own beds.

It’s why she feels so guilty about what she has asked of him, what she continues to keep a secret for fear he might decline.

They all prefer the comfort of trusted company, rather than a bed to themselves. Tonight it’s Jess’s place, which is a nice change and a personal favourite of Sam’s. The house is lavishly decorated and sprawling, the kind of place Sam has always envied. It provides them all with a false sense of normality, of security, even if some of the decorations – like the purple wallpaper in Jess’s room, patterned in faded fairies and toadstools – make them slightly uncomfortable, hinting at an innocence none of them know anymore.

Sam looks down at her coffee, wrinkling her nose involuntarily at the bitter smell. She never used to take it black, but she finds something reassuring in the taste nowadays, even if it does still disgust her. She appreciates its raw honesty, which sounds cheesy and over-analytic but makes sense, somehow.

Besides – milk and sugar? Why bother hiding the truth of the matter? She doesn’t see the point in such frivolities anymore. None of them do.

Sam smiles wanly in concession before tossing back her coffee, downing it in several short swallows.

Mike nods, removing his hand to take a sip of his own drink before setting the mug back down on the table. “Listen…”

Sam already knows what he is going to say. “I’m still sure, Mike,” she says firmly. “I want to do this. I have to do this,” she corrects. Something in her, some shred of conscience, disagrees, but she continues, laying it on thick anyway. “And you – you should want to do this, too. I know you’ve been having the dreams. I know they’ve been getting worse, because mine have been too. I think it’s a sign, Mike. We’re supposed to do this! And I know it’s risky – hell, it’s probably downright insane – but we’ve done the research. We have a plan, and it could really work, imagine if it worked –”

“That’s not what I was going to say,” Mike interjects, cutting her off. “What I was going to say was… I’m in.”

A slow, broad smile stretches across Sam’s face, so warm and happy and overpowering that she forgets entirely about the knot of guilt in her stomach. In fact, it’s the happiest she’s looked in months, and even though the grin is visibly uncomfortable – her lips seem to split even as Mike watches, struggling to curve around her teeth from lack of practise – it sticks. And then, the most incredible part of all, Sam begins to laugh, deep, rumbling, barking laughs that come from the pit of her belly and echo around the empty kitchen.

“Welcome to Team Delusional, my friend,” she says, still laughing, giving Mike a hearty clap on the shoulder.

In that moment, it doesn’t matter that her face is still streaked with tearstains. It doesn’t matter that her eyes are still pink and puffy, or that she has a wicked case of bedhead. Because there is a set to her jaw, a determined gleam in her eye, a look to her that tells Mike she is dead serious. For the first time, he begins to think that they could actually pull this off.

Mike returns her smile.

“Alright – let’s do this bitch.”

*

First up on the agenda: Tell the others.

The seven of them sit around the breakfast table in uncomfortable silence, broken only by the clatter of spoons and the splash of milk.

Sam can’t help but think wistfully of the bustling Sunday mornings they used to have: Ashley, literally crying over spilled milk; Chris, reassuring her that the batter for their pancakes could be saved; Matt, the one doing the actual saving, scraping congealed batter off the linoleum with the clean spatula they were supposed to be using to flip them. Emily, sitting at the counter and inspecting her nails, criticising everyone else’s cooking but not lifting a finger to help; Jess, doing much the same, occasionally helping to slice a banana (but not before taking a slow, exaggerated bite, moaning at how ‘delicious’ it is even though Sam has heard her say before how much she hates them); and Mike, being both endearingly and annoyingly chivalrous by handling the gas stove, because he doesn’t want anyone else burning themselves.

Now her life is split in two, the Before and the After, where the latter seems to stretch on forever, monochrome and joyless, completely lacking in dysfunctional (but still happy) friendships and banana pancakes.

It only makes her even surer of what she has to do.

Chris and Matt are quiet as Sam speaks, assisted occasionally by Mike when she skips a detail in her rush to get it all out. She chooses her words carefully, skimming over some of the more gristly bits, and leaving others out entirely when she can, when she knows Mike won’t correct her because he can’t, because even he is left in the dark. Jess whimpers occasionally, her head down. Emily gazes off into the distance, not meeting Sam’s eye, frowning and shaking her head.

Ashley is the first to speak, abandoning her untouched bowl of Cheerios. “Are you _crazy_?” she cries, her voice shrill, taking on that warbling tone it does when she’s freaked out. “This has to be a joke, right, some sort of sick joke? I mean, what the _fuck_?”

There is a beat. Then: “Ashley… I think Sam’s right.”

Sam had had a sneaking suspicion that Chris would be the first to say yes. Well, not so much a suspicion as a knowledge, based on hard fact and experience. Chris loved Josh, and Josh loved Chris – it had been that way ever since they had first become friends, and Sam had actually considered approaching Chris with her plan rather than Mike, because of course he would say yes. But Sam had quickly dismissed the idea, knowing that Chris would be too eager, too hot-blooded. She had enough dealing with that herself, much less trying to reign in a whole other person. Mike was more calculating, despite his athlete’s exterior that might make one think otherwise.

“What?” Ashley is visibly taken aback, whipping her head around to face the blonde in tangible confusion. Confusion? No, this is more than that. She’s terrified out of her mind. “Chris, no, _fuck_ , you can’t seriously be thinking –”

“He was my friend, Ash. Yours too. I think if there’s a chance that we can –”

“There’s _no_ chance, Chris, none! You heard what the stranger said, okay? Those things are vicious and dangerous, and even if it didn’t kill him, he’d’ve been down there so long that I’m sure by now he’s –”

“You’d know all about what the flamethrower guy said, wouldn’t you?” Emily cuts in, her voice dripping with venom. “Like that time you tried to get Mike to shoot me because I got bit, and the _stranger_ said that was how it worked, that was how you became a Wendigo, except he _never_ said that and you’re a _stupid_ fucking bitch who almost got me _killed_ –”

“I’m sorry, Em, I told you I’m sorry!” Mike protests. “Ash was confusing me, and it was our safe place and –”

“Enough!” Sam yells, banging her fist on the table like a judge’s gavel. “That’s _enough_. Just shut up, all of you.” Surprisingly, they do.

She throws a withering look at Mike, who averts his eyes in shame at having joined in. “You were supposed to support me,” she hisses.

Again, Ash breaks the silence. “Sam, I get it, okay?” she says, trying to sound sympathetic. “I know you were close with him – with all of them – probably the closest of any of us, at the end there. So I get it, I really do. I even agree that this, this _plan_ of yours, could work. Maybe. But if you think that you’re going to get us to risk our lives for a _maybe_ , then –”

“Shut up, Ash.” It’s Chris who speaks, and Ashley is so shocked, so hurt, that she actually does, for once.

Chris meets Sam’s eye, and Mike can see the same determined shine in his gaze that he saw in Sam’s last night. “I’m coming with you,” he announces.

Jess, who has been quiet all this time, clears her throat. “Me too,” she whispers.

Sam and Mike exchange looks. Jess was the one most hurt that night on Blackwood Mountain; the silver shock blanket had barely touched her shoulders before she was being pulled up and hauled away instead, given emergency treatment by the paramedics in the choppers. The bruises, some of them so dark purple they were literally black, had mottled her skin for weeks afterwards. Even now, she still walked with a slight limp, and some of the cuts on her face have only just begun to scar, shiny-pink.

“Jess, I don’t know…” Sam begins, unwilling to turn down the offer but not wanting to risk Jess’s life like this, not after what she’d already been through. Jess’s bravery, her willingness to throw herself once more into the dark simply because she _trusts_ Sam so completely, sends a twang of something like indecision rippling, not for the first time, through her.

In the end it doesn’t matter, because Jess cuts her off.

“No, you don’t,” Jess says, frowning. “You don’t know… don’t know what it was like, down there in the mines. None of you do, not really.”

No one can meet her eye, no one can protest, because she’s right, and they know it. All of them experienced horrific things that night, but no one else had to do it completely, utterly alone.

“None of you know, because none of you were there. But I was – and I can’t leave someone else in the same position. I just can’t.”

Sam nods. “Fine. So, anyone else?”

*

In the end, everyone agrees to help but Ashley, though only Chris and Jess are coming with them onto the mountain; Chris because there is no way Sam could possibly convince him to stay behind, and Jess because she can help guide them safely (as safely as possible, anyway) through the mines. Matt and Emily will accompany them halfway, set up camp at the base of the mountain where there is still reception, and communicate with the group via walkie-talkie.

As the six of them lay out their plans, Sam looks out the window. It is early-spring now, or perhaps just late enough winter that the snow has melted – she isn’t sure. The smell of freshly-mown grass and pollen drifts into the room, tickling pleasantly at her nose, and she can hear the merry buzz of bees, punctured occasionally by the chiming call of a bird. The sky is a clear, cloudless blue, stretching for miles above them, away into the distance.

Blackwood Mountain isn’t visible, of course it’s not, but Sam sees it anyway, jutting like a spear from the line of the horizon into the sky, its pointed tip tearing a hole in everything she thought was invincible. Its silhouette is haunting, menacing. It is a storm, rumbling with fat black raindrops and deadly bolts of lightning.

And she is walking right back into its eye, dragging all her friends along with her.


	2. Colours

Everything is grey.

Down here, in the darkness of the mines, Josh can’t see an inch in front of his face, the world so devoid of colour he doesn’t know what it means anymore. Occasionally, cold, monochromatic light will filter down from above, but for the most part he relies solely on his sense of touch and his ears, the latter of which really aren’t all that reliable, considering sometimes he can still hear _their_ voices, still hear their cries, their pleas…

He thought he’d be able to turn their begging into peals of laughter, into praise for his creative ingenuity. He’d imagined pats on the back, exclamations of “Nice one, bro!” He had never meant for it to happen like this, never meant for it to go this far…

Water drips from stalactites to the cave floor, the watery _drip-drip-drip_ loud as gunshots in Josh’s ears, and suddenly he imagines the water rising around his ankles to his knees, his chest, his neck. He is perched on an outcrop of rock, dry as a bone, but he is drowning, unable to breathe.

His throat closes, his chest seizing. He claws at it with unsteady, aching fingers, sobbing dryly – he ran out of tears days ago, maybe longer. Time has no meaning here; there is nothing to mark it by, and no hope of a time-out, so it all blurs together. What would be the point?

Against his better judgement, he cries out, his voice rising to a mangled scream as it is tossed from rock wall to rock wall. “Help me, please – please, help me! I’m drowning, help me – please, help…”

A voice, if one could call it that, returns his cries, and he immediately ceases, already knowing it is too late. Dread clenches tight in his stomach, a dead weight, pulling him further down into the depths of his own mind. He is not seeing anything; he is seeing double. The world tips sideways, and he clutches to the ground beneath him, sharp rock scraping his skin raw as he scrabbles for handholds.

Slowly, he crawls across the floor, weeping and dry heaving, away from the screeching that is drawing nearer with every minute, growing louder and louder until it rings in his ears and threatens to burst his eyeballs. There is a smell in his nose, too, a smell that makes bile rise in his throat, that would make him outright vomit if he wasn’t so focused on escaping that damn _sound_ –

Something wraps around Josh’s ankle, wrenching him backwards. He cries out, which of course only infuriates her more, but he can’t help it, it just _hurts_ so fucking much. Then he is lifted clear into the air and he is suddenly hurtling through it before he slams into solid earth and stone, the collision already promising to turn him black and blue from head to foot.

He slumps against the cold stone, unable to do anything but whimper his breath, each inhalation sending something sharp and broken poking into his lung. _A broken rib_ , he thinks, his most coherent thought in ages. He swims in and out of consciousness, remaining awake for just long enough to see Hannah’s milky eyes stare at him through the darkness, to hear something heavy and wet, smelling suspiciously like blood, thud to the floor.

His stomach twangs just before he blacks out.

*

Everything is black.

Josh’s head pounds. The occasional rays of light that had lit the cavern before have now disappeared, or perhaps Josh is just going blind. This wouldn’t surprise him – his eyes are so dry, all cried-out, that when he blinks he can hear his eyelids clicking. It makes him want to vomit, want to rip his eyeballs from his head so he will no longer have to hear that infernal clicking. Instead, he squeezes his eyes shut, and psychedelic swirls of colour pulse across his vision.

His entire body aches, covered in lacerations; there isn’t an inch of flesh that hasn’t been bruised right down to the bone. He doesn’t remember ever having been in this much pain before in his life.

But the most excruciating part is not the bruises, not the breaks, not the stiffness in his joints or the crusted blood that coats his skin. No, the most excruciating part is the gnawing in his stomach, the desperation, the insatiable hunger. He doesn’t know how long he has been down here, doesn’t have any idea, but if this feeling in his stomach is any reliable indicator then it must have been _weeks_.

Except, no… that can’t be right. The creature – he can’t bring himself to call it Hannah – or one of its buddies would have given up on… _whatever_ this was and killed him by now. The realisation dawns on him that this hunger is his fault as he tries to recall his last meal, and can’t. In his excitement as he had prepared to execute his grand prank, he had completely forgotten to feed himself, for _days_ on end. If he had, maybe he wouldn’t be so weak now. Maybe he’d be able to get himself out of this mess.

As it is, he will starve to death if he doesn’t eat something soon. He had briefly entertained the idea of catching a rat or a mouse or something, eating it raw, but given up when he realised he couldn’t move farther than two shuffles on either side, let alone fast enough to snag a small, nimble animal like a rodent.

Once again, he eyes the lump of meat the creature had dropped at his feet after it had hurled him across the cavern. He is tempted, so, so tempted, but knows that he can’t, he mustn’t. Because he’s not sure, but he thinks that the meat is in the shape of a forearm, and those fingers at the end look suspiciously human…

*

Everything is red.

Red, the colour of the blood dripping from his fingers, the colour of the gristle caught between his teeth. Teeth? Perhaps that is the wrong word. Josh tongues his mouth, feels something sharp and slick with something iron-tasting. No, not _something_ sharp: an entire _row_ of sharp somethings, growing longer and decidedly sharper where his canines used to be.

Josh recoils in horror, his fingers dropping the dense, wet something they were clinging to. It lands on the floor with a thud-splat, and he remembers.

“No,” he moans, staggering to his feet, a new and strange strength surging through him. “No, no, no… It isn’t real, it isn’t real!” Far away, he can hear something – a screech, echoing back to him through the labyrinth of the mines. The sound takes a backseat, becomes the background score in a movie as a different dialogue moves forward to replace it.

“What did you do, Josh?” Chris says, his voice low, booming, demanding. There is an aggression there that is foreign to Josh, unheard of when it comes to his best friend, his Cochise. But Josh is too fragile right now to process these tell-tale signs of delusion; instead, he accepts the vision of his best friend standing in front of him, with white, milky eyes and black teeth and a grey, rotted face – the colours of death – as reality.

“Josh, _what did you do_?” he repeats, taking a step forward.

“Nothing, I didn’t – I didn’t do anything, I was just so hungry, I’m sorry –”

“Liar! You tried to hurt us, Josh. All of us.” Chris’s voice suddenly becomes one of many, and when Josh looks back up, all his friends are standing in a half-ring around him, as real as the rock wall at his back.

“You tried to hurt us, and now you’re getting what you deserve,” they chant.

“No, it was a mistake I swear – I won’t listen to you, you’re not real –”

“We’re real, Josh.” This time the voices are Hannah and Beth’s – their corpses flank him on either side, rotted lips brushing against his ear. “We’re real, and so is this. So ask yourself… which one of us did you _eat_?”

“ _NO_!” Josh screams, clamping his hands over his ears. They travel right through his sisters – the illusion now broken, he runs forward, and the rest of his friends disappear into thin air as he barrels through them, still running. Everything is tinted red except for his hands, pumping at his sides as he sprints away, glowing faintly white as they swing back and forth.

Something is coming. He can see it, somehow; it is glowing the same ghostly colour as his swinging hands, so he turns and runs in the opposite direction.

Something is coming. It is clamping cold fingers over his brain, squeezing his eyeballs until they turn crimson, and even with all this pain in his mind, all he can think about is how fucking _hungry_ he is.

He has to get out of here, has to leave right now.

He keeps running.


	3. Preparation

Spirit board, check.

Candles, check.

Flashlights, batteries, holy water, salt, flamethrower guy’s journal, a creepy old book full of Latin incantations that Sam had ordered online (because when she tried to check out a similar book from the occult section of the local library, the librarian, who also happened to be best-buddies with her dad, kept giving her weird looks) … all check. Knowing its contents, she hesitates slipping it into her backpack, but only for a second.

Regarding backpack supplies, that was pretty much it, except... Sam slides her hands over something cool and cylindrical, something metal, before shoving it into the pack and zipping it up.

Blowtorch? Double check.

Plus, she’d texted Mike earlier to check that he’d managed to get the walkie-talkies. He had, and they were military-grade – or so he’d assured her. Whether or not that was true she supposed didn’t matter. He had them, so that was that.

And finally – parental permission? Also check, thought that had only been acquired after Sam decided to lie about the whole ordeal.

“If you think we’re letting you out of our sight after what happened, you’ve got another think coming, young lady!”

“It’s just one weekend away, and both Matt and Jess’s parents are coming with us – _Jess_! She was the one who was _most_ affected last time, and she’s _still_ allowed to go! It’s a resort, there’s a super strict curfew, lots of security… And reception, so I’ll text you to let you know I’m safe.”

Or, rather, she’d leave her phone with Matt, and he’d text her parents a pre-prepared goodnight message from Sam at nine pm sharp. But what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

“Please? You know what they say about getting back on the horse…”

And that was that.

Everyone else had managed to convince their folks, too, so that didn’t turn out to be a problem – even Jess, though Sam had no idea how, and wasn’t sure she even wanted to know.

Some things were better left a mystery.

*

The bus trip is eerie, and painfully awkward. The motions are familiar – paying the fare, greeting the driver, who Sam recognises, picking a seat – but the emotions are all wrong. Sam’s heart races, her breath shallow and her palms sweaty. This trip used to fill her with happy anticipation – a little anxiety about what pranks _he_ (she still can’t bring herself to say his name _)_ might play on her, maybe, but never real fear – and now all she feels is dread.

The six of them are the only ones on the bus, so they all cram onto the backseat, their shoulders touching, hands in each other’s personal space, words evading them. No one minds the silence, though; the further up the mountain they climb, the further their heart sinks, till it dips into the acid of their stomach and starts to burn like they’ve all run a twenty-mile marathon. No one is sure they could manage a conversation if they tried.

Sam gazes outside from her seat by the window. The view is beautiful, if slightly blurry. For once, the landscape isn’t hidden beneath snow, and it’s been years since Sam has seen Blackwood Mountain in spring. Emerald-green grass, dotted with tiny blue blooms, covers the ground like a carpet, stretching as far as the eye can see. Tall pines scrape the sky, birds flitting merrily between their branches, and bunches of wildflowers grow at their feet, waving like the sea in the breeze. It’s so picturesque, like something straight from the back of a postcard or the pages of a children’s book.

“I’ve never seen it like this,” Jess murmurs beside her. “It’s beautiful.” So is she, with the warm morning sunlight on her face, her blonde hair falling in loose waves across her shoulders instead of pulled back in its two signature braids. Her eyes are wide and sparkling as they drink in the view. There is reverence in her voice, but also a slight tremble, as if she knows that this is only a disguise, that the Mountain’s mask may come off any moment and the truth will be revealed.

It’s the only thing anyone’s said all trip, and as her voice fades back into silence, the lump in Sam’s throat returns with a vengeance.

*

Matt and Emily get off a stop before they do, the bus driver honking at them as they exchange hugs and wishes of good luck. Despite the confident smile he wears, the walkie-talkie tucked into his pocket and the hefty pack of supplies on his back, Matt’s eyes betray his fear, and Emily hasn’t even bothered with putting on a brave face. Sam doesn’t blame them – she is shitting bricks herself, as Chris had so quaintly put it earlier that day.

“Remember: find a clearing close to the wall of the Washington estate, so you have cover on at least one side, and pitch your tent straight away. Don’t forget about the tent cover – it’s extra protection. Anything happens, use your walkie-talkie straight away, okay? There’s no penalty for false alarms. And if you hear anything, anything at all, you stay as still as you can. They can’t see you if you don’t move. And –”

Matt pulls Sam into a hug, cutting her off. “We’ll be fine, I promise.”

Emily hesitates before nodding, moving forward to place her hand on Sam’s arm. “ _We_ promise.” She smiles softly, obviously meant to reassure. This is the most tender Sam has ever seen her.

“Now get out of here, bitch – we’ve got a schedule to follow!”

Sam smirks into Matt’s shoulder. The future may be a mystery, but at least her friends are still predictable.

*

The now-four of them sit in a circle around a surprisingly large spread of food, the afternoon sunshine casting the swaying shadows of trees on their tent. Its pleasantly warm, a gentle breeze coming through the entrance flaps to toy with Sam’s hair.

“I can’t believe you guys brought so much food,” she says, playfully exasperated, as she bites into an early-season peach. “I thought I said that wasn’t a priority.”

“Relax, Samantha,” Chris replies, shoving a brownie into his mouth. “We brought everything we needed and we still had extra space, so we all just figured, why not? Could be our last opportunity, anyway.”

“Don’t say that,” Sam chastises. “It won’t be.”

Chris just shrugs. “These are excellent, by the way,” he comments with a nod in Mike’s direction as he takes yet another brownie.

“Learned from my mom,” Mike says modestly. “They’re vegan, by the way. I double-checked.”

“Are you sure?” Sam asks doubtfully, giving the plate of brownies a serious side-eye.

“Of course – you heard the man. Anything for m’lady,” Chris answers, holding them out to her. When she reaches for one, he pulls them back out of her reach. “Oh, wait, hang on – what’s this?” He pretends to flick a booger onto the plate, snorting violently to add a touch of realism. “Damn, I guess they’re not anymore. I mean, boogers are an animal product, right?”

“Ew, gross, Chris!” Jess exclaims, wrinkling up her nose. Sam only rolls her eyes, smirking as she snatches one up.

“Very funny.”

They exchange small talk, discussing everything from exams, to fashion trends, to totally unreliable school gossip. If there is a lull in the conversation, a silent pause, someone jumps in with a new topic immediately to fill it.

They talk like this is the last afternoon of their lives.

*

_The Washington’s place seemed bigger, more intimidating, than it used to be, the hallways a maze, the lounges and sun-rooms and patios abandoned-looking, like a tumbleweed could breeze through at any moment. It had always been large – more of a mansion than a house – but had always seemed so full despite that, so teeming with life. There had always been music wafting from the surround-sound systems, people dancing and laughing, baking in the kitchen – sometimes pleasant, if Mike or the maid was cooking, and sometimes not, if any of the kids were – scenting the very air._

_Now, with even fewer people to fill it, that illusion was shattered. They could all see the place for what it really was: empty, but for the shadows and the ghosts. Haunted._

_A house, but never a home._

_The Washingtons, especially Melinda, had tried their hardest to be gracious after what had happened, even though they were still grieving. That was why the gang was here at all. They had been going through the usual routine of crashing at each other’s houses, but Ashley, who was next on the roster, couldn’t get her parents to agree._

_She told them it was because they wanted to ‘have some alone time’, but they all knew better. Ash’s parents – namely, her mom – had been the angriest, the most resentful about what had happened, even more so than Jessica’s, who had mostly just been upset. Their bitterness had only worsened with the passing of weeks, turning to icy hatred when they couldn’t convince their daughter to cut off contact with her friends._

_So Sam, quick thinker that she was, called Melinda. After all this time, she still had her number on speed dial._

_They had unanimously decided to stay in the second living room; it was less cavernous than the first, and more central, closer to the kitchen. Jess and Emily were on the couches, Chris had fallen asleep in an armchair, and the rest were spread out on the floor, huddled on mattresses and curled in sleeping bags._

_The floorboards creaked as Sam tiptoed across them, delicately picking her way through her friends with the utmost care not to disturb them. The stairs, carpeted in lavish pile, were much easier to navigate, her footsteps muffled completely as she ascended._

_Despite the overwhelming sensation of being lost they had all felt upon returning to the Washington’s house, Sam found she remembered the route as well as ever – or at least, her body did. What was that called, again? Muscle memory?_

_Suddenly she was at his door, her fist already raised to knock. She lowered it hastily, embarrassed though she knew no one had seen. Biting her lip, Sam took a breath and pushed open the door._

_The first thing she noticed was the sound of the door swinging open. It squeaked on its hinges, something she had never remembered it doing before. Everything in this house had always been perfectly maintained – faultless, spotless, and squeak-less. Apparently, not anymore. After all, why maintain a room no one would ever step foot in again?_

_The second thing she noticed, as a rectangle of pale silver moonlight fell onto the floor in front of her, throwing her silhouette sharply onto the carpet, was the smell. Of course, it smelled abandoned – musty, cluttered, stuffy – but underneath that were scents she distinctly recognised as being_ his. _His perfume, a refreshing blend of black tea and mandarin that she had giggled at the first time she’d smelled it, but grown to love over time, so much so that he had bought several bottles and refused to wear anything else. The tang of some kind of energy drink, the can snapped open and discarded, half-empty, left somewhere in here to spoil and attract ants. Laundry powder which smelled mostly like dry detergent and a little like vanilla and coconut._

_The third thing she noticed before she was beyond noticing was a gleam on Josh’s bedside table. Trembling, she picked it up. The frame was large, heavy in her hands, the wood polished and smooth against her skin. Inside it, a blown-up photograph; the ten of them, before any of this bullshit, when their biggest concerns had been schoolwork and gossip._

_Sam felt her knees go weak and sat down on the bed, gripping the photo-frame with bone-white fingers. She stroked a finger over Josh’s brown, smiling face, and a single, crystalline tear splattered onto the protective glass, blurring his features._

_“I’ll save you, Josh. I will.”_

*

That was the night she had resolved to return, no matter what, to Blackwood Mountain. She had just never envisioned it would be like this.

The food is all but gone, their hastily-pitched tent low above their heads. There’s still time to re-pitch it, but none of them actually care enough to do so. They laze around, heads in each other’s laps and on each other’s stomachs, half-dozing, with full bellies and warm, fuzzy heads.

“We have to get up early tomorrow,” Sam mumbles through thick lips from her position on Mike’s lap. A few of the others nod or groan in assent, but for the most part her announcement is replied to with quiet – not silence, because she can still hear the birds chirping in the trees outside, a brook babbling nearby, the steady, heavy breathing of her friends around her, but quiet.

“Because we have to have left the mountain before dusk…”

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Chris’s blonde hair ruffled as if by gentle, probing fingers, and her body tenses in response to the movement; but it’s only the wind, breezing through the tent’s entrance-flaps that they have left propped open with their backpacks for fresh air. Through them, Sam stares out at the beginnings of the sunset through heavily lidded eyes, an almost alien feeling of peace descending upon her like night upon day. The sky is still mostly blue, but she can see streaks of gold and orange threading themselves through the clouds.

A ray of golden sun, refracted off some dew-drop or shard of broken glass in the clearing beyond, lands on her face. _Touched by the heavens_ , she thinks almost deliriously. _For good luck._ It is the last conscious thought she has before the weight of the last of her worries falls away and she slips into unconsciousness.


	4. Escape

The sunset is so bright it almost hurts to look at, but Josh looks anyway. He drinks it up like it is water and he is a parched man inches from death, refusing to look away. Perhaps some part of him intuitively knows, or at least suspects, that if he doesn’t pull this off before he succumbs to the hunger inside, this will be the last sunset he ever sees.

Snow crunches underneath his tired feet; this high up on the mountain, it hasn’t melted yet, even though he can see blue sky beyond the scraps of greyish white that cling so fervently to the mountain’s peak, and the air is a pleasantly warm temperature. The chill comes from the white below him, and urges him forward – he’s weak enough as it is, without snow sapping him of what little strength he has left.

As if on cue, he is overcome by a series of violent shivers that chatter his teeth in his skull and raise gooseflesh on his arms. He has to move, and fast, if he doesn’t want to be found frozen to death on Blackwood Mountain in spring.

That is, if he even lasts long enough to freeze to death. Something tells him that his captor might do a much more efficient job of killing him than the elements will, and here he is, leaving a trail of footprints behind him, neat as breadcrumbs…

The scene looks like a painting, a watercolour or perhaps oil, as he staggers forward, his limping and hunched form silhouetted against the fiery colours of the sky. He can see each colour, hot and glowing, distinct from one another even through the film of red that covers his sight like a glaze.

Like a canvas, the sky streaked with a million warm, rich shades – shell pink, fire engine red, cantaloupe orange, buttercup yellow, glittering gold – that blend together into a seamless gradient, radiating outwards from the pale orb of the sun that is steadily lowering towards the horizon.

The light splatters onto the reflective surface of the snow like paint, arcing off shards of ice that disappear into nothingness as Josh passes by, like an imaginary pool of water wavering atop hot asphalt on a summer’s day.

Instead, the snow is splattered with something real, something tangible, something that looks like red acrylic and smells like iron and oozes, drips, gushes from the lacerations that cover his aching body, that seem to form his very skin, stretched taut over splintered bones and throbbing muscles.

And step after painful step, Josh descends the slope of the mountain.

*

He passes their tent without even knowing it is there.

He is separated from it only by a slim row of pines and dark khaki canvas that fades into the tree line; where before everything he saw was tinged with red, everything has instead faded since he emerged from the caves, leeched of its colour, making any shape – even the distinct, hulking mass of a tent – difficult to distinguish.

He presses on.

He walks slowly, and with an old man’s gait, still shivering. Every now and then, he keels over to catch his breath, but resumes walking quickly. Night is coming; he has to outrun it.

What seems like hours pass this way, and he is left with too much time – to think, to wonder, to drown in a vast pool of his own unending guilt. His hunger, pushed to the back of his mind by the force of his altogether more pressing circumstances, comes back with a vengeance, hunger pangs ripping through his abdomen and squeezing whimpers from his cracked lips. It is all-consuming, seeming to come not just from his stomach but from every cell in his body. He’s never felt so starving.

It lasts so long that, rather than simply subsiding, it instead becomes a hollow, aching sensation that fills him from the inside out, unfalteringly steady yet as agonising as the irregular pulses that had come before.

His red vision is returning, too. At present, it is little more than a peripheral tinge, but it feels him with dread all the same. From the corner of his eye, he can see his own body, his shoulders, his arms, slowly taking on that glowing white from before – from the caves. Out in the open air, it had seemed to disappear, but as twilight descends it grows stronger and stronger.

Then he hears the screech, and he freezes.

His blood runs cold, sluggish in his veins. Everything seems to slow, the trickle of sand in an hourglass.

He turns his head.

Through the trees, a glowing _something_ leaps. It lands on all fours, partially obscured behind a particularly thick trunk, but Josh can still see it as it moves again, twitching its head from side to side. Every move it makes is erratic, primal, yet done so with quick precision. It opens gaping jaws and shrieks again, high, grating.

He recognises that something.

Or, at least, what kind of something it is. And he has a fairly good idea of which specific something it might be.

Praying the creature won’t be able to detect the slight shivering that he cannot control, he stands as still as possible, becomes a statue between the trees. The glow that had haloed his body fades from his own vision and the creature seems lost. It shakes its head this way and that before heading forward again, towards him, though quite far off to his right. Nothing of tis movement can be heard, but periodically it lets forth several more ear-splitting screeches that snap-freeze his bones and chill his flesh.

Josh waits several minutes even after the glow of the creature has melted away, just to make sure, before trudging onwards. Every now and then he stops, casting his gaze about in a full three-sixty to search for any trace of white before moving onwards.

Eventually, the snow underfoot turns to green grass. Wildflowers grow at the bases of the trees, swaying gently in the night air which has draped itself over Josh’s skin like a slightly humid cloth. The dragging, muffled thuds of his own footsteps fade in his ears, and the moon rises in the sky, now a deep navy blue dotted with stars like inverted speckles on an egg. Once more, everything is tinged with crimson, spreading rapidly inward until it is all he can see.

Something has arrived.

It is the hunger, it is the red, it is the squeezingpullingtuggingclampingaching pain, it is the evil and the twisted and the sick and the bastardised, broken, perverted, the _something_ –

Something, a sound, penetrates the invisible membrane that stifles his hearing. An oxymoron; a joyful scream, followed with laughter. A name that seems like it should be familiar, but is only an echo.

“Matt!”

Josh, feeling very un-Josh-like indeed, cocks his head instinctively towards the noise.

More laughter.

Hunched forward in a predator’s posture, he lunges.


	5. Refuge

Everything is a matter of perspective.

He had found his way out of the mines, had staggered about aimlessly through the forest, had slipped past the Wendigo, had, against all odds, miraculously found what could prove to be his only hope. Where before there had been only twisting mine shaft after twisting mine shaft, filled with nothing but darkness and dancing shadows, there was now a light at the end of the tunnel.

Most would call this hope. Most would call this refuge.

“Oh God, Matt, hold him down, hold him down! Oh fuck, fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck _fuck,_ Matt, what do we _do_?”

Josh bucks beneath him, his hands – which look as if they are clawed, but how could that be? – windmilling, legs kicking. His nostrils are flared, his hair is tousled. Deep, dark bags, like bruises, sag under his eyes and his chin and jaw are streaked with… God... what looks like dried blood, flaking away as he twists and squirms, growling.

Matt presses his knee into Josh’s chest, pinning him to the tarp floor. His hands circle Josh’s wrists, holding them down firmly against the plastic.

“Use the walkie talkie, Em,” Matt grunts out, trying to keep a level tone in his strained voice. Josh snarls, scratching at Matt’s wrists and thrusting his feet into the air. “It’s in the corner of the tent, on top of the bag. Grab it and use it to talk to the others – tell them they need to find a way to get down here now, okay?”

Emily sniffs, sucking in great big mouthfuls of warm night air through her nostrils, and nods. Matt hears the tarp floor crackling as she moves across to the other side of the tent, hears her trembling voice as she speaks into the microphone. Her voice is raised to be heard over the sounds Josh is emitting, like a wild and frenzied animal, her words tumbling and tripping over one another as they fight to get out.

“Hello? Hel-hello, can anybody hear me? Do you copy? I repeat, do you copy?” Matt can hear the crackling reply of static from here, even above Josh grunting and growling practically into his ear, and his heart sinks in his chest.

No reply.

That’s when Emily loses it.

“ _Hello!_ Somebody, _please_ , we’re fucking stuck here and Josh is _turning_ and oh God, oh God please help us, what if they can hear, what if they can _hear?_ Guys, where the fuck are you, oh my God –”

Outside, somewhere in the woods, a screech echoes.

“Oh God, _Matt_ –”

“Fuck! Okay, Emily – shit – turn off the lantern, okay? Stop swearing, I’m trying to think! Turn it off and look in my backpack, grab a sock or a t-shirt, anything you can find, and give it to me. Now!”

Her hands shaking, she switches off the walkie talkie – their only method of communication – and then the lantern. The tent is bathed in darkness. Emily hands Matt one of her own tank tops and he stuffs it into Josh’s mouth mid-scream, his voice muffled. Emily claps a helping hand over Josh’s full mouth as Matt repositions himself so he is sitting directly atop his friend’s chest, pinning Josh’s arms underneath his feet so that his hands are free.

He immediately uses them to pull Emily close, clapping a hand over her mouth. She is so scared she doesn’t even make a noise of indignation – she just folds numbly into him, her lips trembling against his palm. A tic throbs at the smooth, brown base of Matt’s throat, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows. Every muscle in his body is tensed, trying so hard to keep both Josh and himself still that there is little energy left for anything other than undiluted, primal fear.

Suffocating under the warm night air, they sit.

*

Once again, Sam is stuck. The Wendigo is there, she knows it is, she can _feel_ it, and even if she couldn’t she knows she has been here before. Not that that negates the fact that this is happening _now_ – no, this is here, and it’s real, a sort of sick Groundhog Day that keeps her repeating an endless cycle of suffering.

When the pressure is released, Sam falls to the floorboards almost gratefully, knowing that it will soon be over, that all she has to do is roll over and recognise Hannah before she is ripped apart and she can finally –

“ _Josh?_ ”

Only Hannah – well, the Wendigo – isn’t Hannah at all, but her brother instead. Josh’s features are sickly, stretched and distorted. His skin, a waxy grey instead of its usual luminous brown, is pulled taut over bones sharp as blades. Ivory fangs protrude from his ragged lips, turned in a downward curve that looks more like a cry for help than any sort of scowl. Like he’s in so much pain, he can’t bear it anymore.

Crouched over her, he raises one clawed hand. Sam flinches away, expecting the rest of this living nightmare to go as usual – but instead, his hand keeps rising, higher and higher, until he touches claw to forehead and begins, slowly but surely, to peel away his own face.

Sam bolts up, sweating bullets.

Something is wrong.

The night air has grown suddenly muggy, clinging uncomfortably to her like a second skin she finds herself wishing she could shed. Combined with the dazed confusion one always feels upon waking up, she finds it impossible to distinguish between dream and reality anymore. Even now, is she truly awake? Or is this just another layer of her subconscious, fooling her into relaxing before returning for the ultimate scare? Visible through the open flaps of the tent, a waxing moon hangs in the inky sky above her, less a canvas now and more of a net, sagging oppressively as it trails the treetops.

A sound rips through the thick air, violent, loud, like a deafening clap of thunder –

Behind her, Mike’s silhouette falls as his snore trails off into a high-pitched whistle, fading into silence before repeating again. Sam lets out a sigh of relief, chuckling nervously. That must have been the sound that woke her up; it _must_ have. Just Mike’s stupid fucking snoring. And all that was just a dream, just a nightmare…

Out in the forest, something screeches, and even the owls fall silent.

On the other side of the tent, the walkie talkie crackles to life, just in time for the last of Emily’s frantic words to be heard before trailing away into static, then nothingness. “… _turning_ and oh God, oh God please help us, what if they can hear, what if they can _hear?_ Guys, where the fuck are you, oh my God –”

And even though they must be miles away, Sam swears she hears Emily scream.

It doesn’t take her long to piece it all together, to figure out who ‘they’ are, to know who must be ‘turning’.

“Mike!” Sam whispers, shaking the figure beside her. “Mike, get up! Mike, we have to go!”

Anger rearing inside her like a startled horse, Sam slaps the sleeping figure across the face so hard her own hand stings. There isn’t time to regret it, though, as he immediately jolts up. “Michael Munroe, we have to go – _now!_ ”

He doesn’t even hesitate, just simply trusts her. There is something in her voice, in the way it shakes, that compels him more strongly than any other force he’s ever felt. Mike catches her eye, his gaze boring into her so intensely it should make her feel uncomfortable, but instead makes her feel… reassured – if only slightly. Then the moment is broken and he’s grabbing as much of the supplies as he can before striding out of the tent, leaving their safe haven, their refuge without a moment’s pause.

Sam grabs the rest of the supplies, hefting them onto her back like they weigh nothing. She leaves behind a single shaker of salt and one bottle of holy water, pinning a scrawled note beneath the latter and leaving it all where only moments ago she herself had lain, in – relatively – peaceful slumber.

_Gone with Mike to finish the mission. Can’t wait till morning anymore. Use these to make a ring around the tent – and a pentagram somewhere near, if you can – then get back inside. Keep the lights out and stay quiet. Don’t move until dawn, then leave BEFORE DUSK. See you soon. Will meet you off BW-M._

_Love, Sam_


	6. Execution

Somewhere up high, at the top of a snow-capped mountain, a waxing moon floats in a sky made of solid onyx, crushed under its own weight. Further and further it sinks, until it seems as if shards of it are falling, are grazing the tops of the pines that scrape its iron surface. It is as if something in the very atmosphere weighs it down, like the air itself has gained mass, has its own force of gravity, is pushing, pushing…

Below, the forest has never been so still. Squirrels shiver in hollow trees, compelled to remain in the relative safety of their wood homes for reasons that escape them. Owls abandon the hunt, beaks snapped tightly shut to stifle their own hoots. Not even so much as a single insect moves. It’s almost as if the entire hillside has been dipped in liquid amber and hardened instantaneously, freezing everything stuck inside its golden clutches mid-motion.

Then something screeches, sending a cloud of squawking birds into the sky. The sound ripples outward, and the illusion is broken.

“Help! Oh God, help us, somebody, please! Matt! Mike! Sam! _Somebody!_ ”

Sam has been picking her way silently through the forest, Mike at her heels and blowtorch in hand, but at the sound of Emily’s desperate voice she begins to sprint, forcing her way forward at the fastest pace she can manage. Mike struggles to match her pace, the supplies bouncing on their backs as they snap off twigs and tear down debris in their way.

A stray branch whips against Sam’s cheek, slicing the pliant flesh open, but she ignores it. The stinging in her chest is stronger as her breaths wheeze in and out, her lungs burning, stretching and stretching and stretching, her pulse pounding and her blood rushing and –

Thinking quickly, she screams into the night, as loudly as she can with the little breath she has to spare. Wordlessly, bloodcurdlingly, she screams and screams and screams and screams and then –

The monster screeches in reply. It is so close, only metres away. Signalling to Mike to stay down, she moves to the right, where the trees begin to thin out and the moon becomes visible, watching, waiting. When the tent – or, rather, what’s left of it – comes into view, pitched in the middle of a clearing, she ducks down, fades into the background again as she observes the scene.

The tent had been ripped to shreds, its roof collapsed, half-obscuring the people inside. Canvas debris and structure poles, many snapped in half, pockmarked the clearing. The damage was obvious, irreparable, so Sam quickly shifted her gaze back to the people inside, frowning.

Instead of two figures – three including the Wendigo, which, confused by her scream, now prowls the perimeter searching for its new prey – there are three. Sam can see Emily, her eyes wide round discs in a gaunt face and her pupils blown with fright, her pale cheeks stained with tears. At least she’s shut up now. Behind her, partially obscured, is Matt. A dark stain of some kind blooms on his side like a sickening flower, right underneath his ribs, and even as Sam watches, several drops ooze from the wound, splattering onto the third figure, the stranger she has yet to identify.

As she examines the figure, her brow furrowed and her eyes squinted to bring out more detail in the dim light, her breath catches in her throat. He is at least as tall as Matt, yet still small-looking somehow – quite barrel-chested, too. His skin – at least, what little of it can be seen between black-and-blue bruises and puss-filled lacerations, is a familiar tan colour.

Could it be…?

His nose is slightly hooked, his eyes are heavily lidded, and when he groans, ever so softly, and she hears the timbre of his voice – that’s when Sam realises.

Her eyes widen in recognition and, without thinking, she stands, strides forward, reaches out. The weapon in her hands, their salvation, clatters to the forest floor, hits an exposed root and rolls away into the underbrush. “Josh?”

“Sam, no!”

It all happens so quickly, and yet Sam swears she sees it in slow-motion, frame by frame.

The monster, hunched over at the other side of the clearing to sniff at the air, stands up and growls. Its growl builds to a shriek as it locks its rotted eyes on Sam, surrounded by a ghostly-white halo as she moves through the clearing, right into its line of sight. The sound it makes, worse than any horror-movie banshee any of them have ever heard, is so indescribably horrifying it would drive any lesser woman insane, and the fact that it is so familiar makes it all so much worse. Its breath rattles audibly in its rail-thin chest and spittle trembles at the ends of its fangs as it lunges forward, and all hell breaks loose.

Sam, too late, realises her mistake and dives to the side, hitting the ground hard. Panting to regain her breath, she clutches one of her hands around empty air as if brandishing a weapon, then pats the holster on her hip, only to come up empty. Shock begins to set in, freezing her limp body to the ground.

Mike steps forward too, calls her name, a warning issued too late. But the sound serves as yet another distraction, and he thinks to freeze before _it_ has registered his location.

The monster snarls in frustration, throwing its head back as if howling to the moon before it crouches down again. Even doubled over, it still towers above them, its elongated limbs shaking in rage. In the darkness, Sam can just make out the shape of a butterfly on its upper arm.

Though the monster’s senses are dulled, they are close enough and scared enough that it can _smell_ them through its decayed nostrils; it knows they are close, knows they are practically between its jaws already, and still it cannot find them.

But something else in the clearing is moving, and the four of them watch as the Wendigo turns its shrunken head and locks its gaze on its new prey – on Josh.

*

Josh snaps his head to the side, in response to a word whose meaning he does not consciously process but is still acutely aware of.

“Josh!”

The word sounds like it is travelling through miles of thick, wavering water just to meet him, and for some reason his body reacts to it, even when his mind doesn’t. The red seems to pale for a moment, more pink than crimson, and there is a moment where maybe, just maybe, he could free himself, could make his way over to that voice, to the person who spoke that _word_ , _(my name?)_ –

Then the moment is gone and he can’t think straight, not with this fog clouding his mind, not with the fingers that grip it so tightly he’s sure the grey matter must be bleeding ruby red.

It doesn’t help that where he is – wherever that might be – is filled with ghostly figures, at least five of them, that keep appearing and disappearing, catching his eye as they move and then simply blinking out of existence, blurring into the red of the woods behind them. He’s sure that this is it, that he’s finally snapped, that this is the beginnings of real insanity.

Another figure appears at the edge of the clearing, tall, broad. It calls another name before disappearing again. Josh wants to scream, it’s so infuriating; why can’t they just stay put?

So he does, and the sound that escapes him is unlike anything he has ever heard before.

Well, that’s not entirely true. He _has_ heard it before, just never from his own mouth. It is the monster’s cry, the keening, nails-down-a-chalkboard screech that has never ceased echoing in his mind ever since he came to this godforsaken place. And now it spills out, no longer contained inside him, but flung outward like a dart.

The monster, his sister, turns to meet him. It – she – is grinning through maggot-eaten lips, her bald head cocked to the side as she examines him, lying on the ground for a reason that must escape her entirely. She can’t see the figure on top of him, pinning him down. Frankly, neither can he, but still he knows the boy is there. He can _feel_ him; somehow, even though it had seemed like he was beyond feeling anything other than hunger, he can feel him.

_What does that mean?_

It doesn’t matter, because there is no time left to ponder – Hannah is coming.

Josh frees his left arm, somehow knowing the boy sitting atop his chest won’t risk continuing to hold him down, and rolls him off with one well-aimed shove. His arms seem narrower, longer, but there’s no time to think about that now. The red is pulsing, his heart is pounding in his eyes, and Hannah is coming.

He staggers to his feet, shaking like a leaf, his every muscle screaming in protest as he stumbles backwards. Every move is punctuated by another pang of hunger, another sword in his side, until it all becomes so much that he simply collapses, finding himself on the ground only a few metres away from where he had started.

Then Hannah arrives, and she is looming over him, her scabbed mouth agape in what Josh swears is a proud smile, like she’s that little kid again, catching a fish for the first time in one of the mountain streams that sprawl across their mountain property. She blows a breath of sour, decomposing air into his face, and the image is gone as fast as it had come, dust in the wind.

The last thing he sees is her round, withered skull, framed by the bloated body of the moon behind her, before the very air is set alight. The moon drowns in fire, and everything turns black.

*

Mike can’t bear to watch. The monster has Josh in its ragged hands, and everything they have worked for is slipping like sand between his fingers.

Out of the corner of his eye, something gleams brightly, struck at just the right angle by a ray of silver moonlight.

The blowtorch.

Sam sees it too, but Mike is closer. He gets to it before she does, scoops it up in his hands, but something makes him stop.

“You have to do it,” he says, and throws it to her. She catches it deftly, swinging around to face Hannah all in one fluid movement.

She glances back at Mike, who is steadily edging his way around the clearing so that he has a clear route to Emily and Matt, like she is seeking some sort of confirmation. When he nods, a small, tight movement, she pulls the trigger.

If everything had gone in slow motion before, time has definitely been sped up now. Everything is a blur as flame spurts from the nozzle of the weapon, encasing the monster in probing fingers of fire that scratch, that maim. She can hear the sizzle of its dead flesh, smell burning as its skin is seared black. The smell pervades her nostrils, makes her gag. Bile rises in her throat, thick and acidic, but she keeps her finger on the trigger, maintains a continues spray of fire that keeps the enraged beast at bay.

The fire stutters, and Sam uses it as an opportunity to bark a command at the others.

 “Grab him!” Sam screams at Mike. “Get Josh and the others and get out of here!”

She aims the weapon again, trusting that Mike will follow through. Last time, she would not have been strong enough to do this, to kill her former best friend. Now, she knows better. Now, there is not a bone of indecision in her body. This thing in front of her, with the scorched flesh and the paralysing shriek, this isn’t her friend. This isn’t Hannah. It may have been, a long time ago, but now it is just another obstacle that stands between her and what she must do to get Josh back – and she has always been good at eliminating obstacles.

Between Matt and Mike, Josh would be easily subdued. Not that this is necessary; Sam can clearly see his limp form from here, hanging between them like –

_(don’t think like that!)_

\- like a corpse, like a dead man.

 _Not if I can help it_ , she thinks resolutely, and aims once again at the monster.

*

Chris lounges across the tent floor, absent-mindedly snacking on now-stale potato chips. On the other side of the tent, Jess is absorbed in a small, worn leather-bound volume she seems to have conjured out of nowhere, her brows furrowed in a frown as she worries her lower lip between her teeth. The tension is palpable, the air is thick with it; or at least, it is for Chris, who can’t stop thinking about Josh, about where he might be, about how badly he might be hurt. About if he can be saved.

“I wonder how they’re going.”

Jess shrugs, licking the tip of an unmanicured finger and flipping the page.

“I mean – I wonder why they had to execute early, you know? Like, what if this fucks up the plan somehow?”

“It won’t,” Jess replies. Nothing about the way she says it is comforting.

Chris tries a different avenue of conversation. “What’re you reading?”

“A book.”

“Where’d you, uh, get it from?”

“Sam’s backpack.”

Not for the first time, Chris feels his chest contract with a pang of worry. “Won’t they need that?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

Jess snaps the book shut with a low thud, sending dust into the air. She meets his eyes, and something in her gaze makes Chris stop. It’s not exactly comforting, but there is knowledge there, and _that_ , at least, is somewhat reassuring.

At least _someone_ knows what they’re doing.

“Trust me, it’s better here.”

With that, she reopens the book and resumes reading.


	7. Sacrifice

After contacting Mike, Matt and Emily, Sam switches the walkie talkie on again and attempts to get through to the others.

“Jess? Chris? Come in, Chris. Do you copy?”

The clearing is deathly still. In its centre is a mangled pile of blackened, melted plastic and canvas; a little in front of that, a still-burning heap of scorched flesh that sizzles quietly, a perfect counterpart to the walkie talkie’s static crackle. Sam stares down at the destruction, the weapon used to create it nestled safely back inside the holster at her hip. As she watches, smoke rises from the embers and sails into the sky before it is whipped away by the spring breeze, heading down the mountain.

The walkie talkie comes abruptly to life with Chris’s worried voice. “Sam, is that you? Sam, it’s Chris. Where are you guys? What’s happening? Where’s Josh? Over.”

“I need you guys to get down here, asap. Run. Don’t worry about making noise or moving. She’s – it’s gone, and the others haven’t made an appearance all night, so I’m assuming they’re still where flamethrower guy left them last time, or else they’re way up at the top of the mountain where they won’t hear or see you. I’m at the place where Matt and Emily made their camp. Hurry. Over.”

“What? Sam, can you just explain what ha –”

Sam clicks off the walkie talkie and makes herself comfortable. All she has to do now is wait. Soon, her plan – in its unrevealed entirety – will really be put into action.

*

Mike, Matt, Emily and Josh arrive first. Josh is still blacked out, but they tie him to a tree anyway, binding his wrists together with thick rope. Mike ties the knots – none of the others, except maybe Matt, even know what they’re called, let alone how to tie them, but that doesn’t matter; what matters is that they’re practically un-doable, so they know that when Josh _does_ wake up, he won’t be able to surprise them.

Jess and Chris arrive soon after, their hands tightly linked. Something about that, something about the way Chris looks both reverently and mournfully at the blonde whose hand he grips onto so tightly, makes Sam’s stomach flip.

_What does he know?_

But there is no time to follow that train of thought. Sam orders them all about, pulling various items out of the supply packs and passing them around with specific instructions. A double ring of salt and holy water with a radius of a good three metres is constructed, lined on the inner edge with unscented candles. A pentagram, a symbol of protection, is drawn around Josh, his skin waxy in the flickering candlelight. Sam sits directly in front of him, the book of Latin incantations heavy on her lap. At Josh’s feet lies a knife, razor-sharp, glinting darkly in the moonlight. Casting a cursory glance around, everything seems to be in order, but she can’t shake the feeling that something is missing, or rather, that something is misplaced, not right.

Now, when the time is near, there are so many second-thoughts bouncing around inside her skull that she can’t even focus on one for long enough to feel guilty. It all churns together into one buzzing, inseparable mass.

The gang sits in a ring around Josh’s limp, bound body, and looks at Sam expectantly.

“We... we chant,” she stammers, opening the volume in her lap to the dog-eared page. “In Latin. And we follow the instructions in the stranger’s journal…”

_The stranger’s journal! That’s it! Where is it? Where is it, Sam? You haven’t lost it, have you, you stupid girl, you –_

“You mean this?” Jess says, holding. She is partially obscured by the trunk of the tree Josh is bound to, but even from here and cast in shadow Sam can see the hard shape of her mouth, pressed into a thin line, and her eyes like flint.

Sam tries to play it cool, but her head is burning, spinning, her heart pounding faster than a hummingbird’s. _She knows_. _No one was supposed to know_. “Yeah, that’s it – could you, um, could you just pass that here, thanks –”

“Why didn’t you just tell us, Sam?” Jess says, running her hands over the cracked, faded leather. Nothing about her tone is accusatory – she actually sounds sad, like she’s been betrayed.

_It isn’t my fault, I couldn’t_ , Sam thinks, but stays silent.

“What is she talking about, Sam?” Mike asks, frowning, turning his head one way, then the other. It makes Sam dizzy to look at.

“Nothing, I –”

“Here,” Jess interrupts, flipping open the journal to one of the most worn pages. It is rippled, as if it had been soaked in water. Interestingly enough, the surrounding pages are relatively unmarked. Sam knows why, recalls seeing her own tears splashing onto the paper as she read the passage, as she unlocked the secret to salvation and realised the cost. Tears well in her eyes again, just at the memory.

“… _In all my years studying them, trying everything I can to find out more about them, I’ve only ever seen one successfully extricated from its host. Exorcised, you might say. But it was different from any exorcism I’ve ever heard of. There was no salt, no holy water, no candles or incense or chanting. It was so simple, and yet so difficult, and it came at a cost. A life for a life, that sort of thing. And it happened to be the life of someone I loved, someone I brought up here to keep me company – but that part doesn’t matter. He’s gone now. What matters is how it happened. I need to record that, need to make sure others know in case there ever comes a time when they are so desperate they are willing to pay the price…_ ”

Jess stops there, her voice breaking. The rest, she paraphrases. “His friend… bit the Wendigo. It had him in its clutches, and he bit it, must have sucked out some blood or, or something – which is cannibalism – but then he was shot. The stranger wasn’t aiming for him, but he was hit, and he died, and it was like the spirit had… had travelled into his body, and left the other one, and then it was destroyed before he turned.” She wiped away a tear, biting back a sob. Everyone is deathly silent, holding their breath. “In the end it didn’t even matter, because the host body was so old that as soon as the Wendigo spirit was gone, it crumbled to dust.”

Jess makes a sweeping gesture. “This was all just a distraction, wasn’t it, Sam? You didn’t think any of us would come if we knew, so you made all this up.”

Emily looks pissed; Chris looks hurt, but unsurprised. So she was right about him knowing something, after all. Matt is shocked, but even now too sweet to be angry, and Mike – Sam can’t even look at Mike. Their faces glow in the candlelight, beacons of betrayal, of hurt. Of realisation.

Sam can’t look at her, can’t look at any of them. Her palms are clammy, slick with sweat; beads of it roll down her forehead and drip into her eyes, catch in her lashes. She can’t breathe, her chest is so tight.

“I just wanted to save him,” Sam whispers past the knot in her throat, not lifting her head, not even for a moment.

Jess nods, bites her lip. “I know,” she says, her voice filled with the wisdom of someone a hundred years older, and Sam believes her. “I know. I do too.”

When she realises what Jess means, she snaps her head up so hard her neck practically breaks, begins to call out – “Jess, no!” – but it is too late; Jess lunges forward, snatches the knife from the grass at Josh’s feet. Her mouth is already at Josh’s wrist, where the skin is already broken, and she is biting, sucking as hard as she can, drawing blood through her teeth, mouth turned in a grimace at the taste.

It is then that Josh wakes up, eyes flying wide open, terrified, a deer in the headlights. Only there is no light, none save for the moon and the fire, silver and gold, dancing like ghosts in his irises. He screams, so loud it pierces the heavens. Rain begins to fall from a previously cloudless sky now thick with thunderheads, dousing the candles and thrusting them into complete darkness. The warm night air turns chilly, raising the hair on Sam’s arms, prickling them with goosebumps. She can smell the electricity in the air, taste it on her tongue.

With the most amount of strength Sam has ever seen in a person, and is sure she will ever see in her lifetime, Jess sits back on her haunches with blood-stained lips, raises the knife, and –

A flash of silver; a stream of red so dark it is like ink, so dark it colours the stars black.

She doesn’t scream, not like Sam expected, not like Josh does. She just falls limply to the ground, like a rag doll, and stays there.

 “ _Jess!_ ”

It is Mike who screams now, sobbing openly as he dives forward, far, far too late. He takes the girl in his arms and weeps.

Sam is at Josh’s side in an instant, not caring how cold-blooded she might seem. Everything is slick, and she can’t tell if it is rain, mud or blood on her knees. More than that, she doesn’t care. She ignores Mike’s crying, Emily’s screaming – she takes Josh’s bleeding wrist, uses the hem of her shirt to staunch the flow of blood.

“Josh? Josh?”

He is gasping like he has just resurfaced from a swim, like he hasn’t tasted air this sweet in his whole life. Sam presses her hand to his forehead; his skin is burning up, the world’s worst fever. At the same time, she can feel him trembling, hear his teeth chattering. She manages somehow to untie the knots that restrain him, tugging so hard at the rope that she breaks several fingernails, drawing blood.

A heavy hand covers hers and she immediately recoils, ready to defend Josh with whatever means necessary.

“Shhh, I’m not – I want to help you.” Chris holds his hands palm-up in surrender, and Sam can tell by the way his eyes melt when he looks at Josh that he is being sincere. She nods tersely in reluctant acknowledgement.

They drag him back into the clearing, to the smouldering remains of the tent. Sam uses what’s left of the structure poles to prop up some of the larger pieces of canvas, to create a make-shift shelter while Chris holds Josh’s hand, one arm slung over his shoulders.

There, she lies next to him, staring up at the fractured black sky. Chris lies down on his other side, his own eyes never leaving his best friend’s face.

There, they wait out the fever. Together.

*

Slowly but surely, the red is fading. The tentacles that coil around his brain so tightly begin to release their grip, to set him free.

He is swimming up, up, and finally he can hear, can see, can feel. Rain is falling on his cheeks, cool and sweet and wet. Something sharp pokes his lower lip _(fangs?)_ and his wrist stings like hell. His head pounds, he can smell the sharp tang of iron, and everything is hot and cold all at once. Everything hurts, but for the first time in a long time he feel very much alive, and for this he could not be more grateful.


	8. Survivors

The bus is deathly quiet. Josh sits in the back seat, sandwiched between Sam and Chris, who have each taken hold of one of his hands during the course of the trip and are holding onto it as if their lives – or, he thinks more accurately, his – depend on it. Their touch is warm, comforting. Sam’s hand is slightly calloused, and its rough texture keeps him grounded. Chris’s is soft, fleshy; it feels like he’s holding a pillow or a soft toy. It makes him feel like a kid again, like he’s invincible. When he feels himself floating away, he gives them both a squeeze, and they always squeeze right back.

The rest of the gang sits up the front. Matt has his arm around Emily, whose eyes are puffy and red from crying, whose hands have been balled up in fists ever since he woke up from this nightmare. Mike sits behind them with red-rimmed eyes, holding two packs - his, and Jessica’s.

They had all greeted him when he woke up, if only briefly, so it wasn’t as if they were ignoring him. Mike had clapped him on the back, given him a hug – he’d never known Mike to do that before. Matt had hugged him too, called him bro, and Emily had, well, given him a look – but that still counted as acknowledgement, right? And Emily had never been that friendly – she was the group _bitch_ , after all – so that was really all that was to be expected, and they definitely weren’t ignoring him. Still, the tension was palpable. Why weren’t they celebrating? Hell, they weren’t even _talking_.

Outside, the mountain whips by like a blurry watercolour painting. The woods look light and welcoming, like something out of a children’s book, but Josh knows the truth. He wants to look, wants to see it all disappearing behind him and feel the satisfaction of knowing that the whole godforsaken landform is in his past, but he can’t. It’s too hard to focus, and his eyes still sting. Though, come to think of it, he’s not exactly sure why, nor does he know why his entire body feels like it’s just been sent through a blender.

At least half an hour passes this way before he breaks the silence, his voice dry, croaking. “Where is… Ashley? What’s… what’s wrong with Jess?”

Chris looks right through him, looks at Sam, who presses her lips into a hard line before answering. “You’ll see Ashley soon, I promise.”

“And… Jess? Her pack is here.”

There is an even longer pause, and when Sam finally speaks, it seems more as if she is talking to herself than to Josh. “Jess is… brave. Braver than me, braver than any of us. She’s in a good place now, I know it.”

Josh knows this is as much as he’s going to get, so he gives up. He leans his head back and closes his eyes. The last thing he hears before he drifts away is Sam’s voice, speaking to herself once again.

“She has to be.”

*

The silence doesn’t last past the yellow shell of the bus. Not one minute after it has crawled away, a bug on the vast empty highway, Emily explodes.

“I should never have come, _never_! This is all your fault Sam, you fucking bitch – I thought you were better than this, I actually _trusted_ you, I can’t believe I fucking trusted you, and now –”

There is more, but Josh doesn’t listen, can’t bear to listen. He shrinks in on himself instead, subconsciously clinging to Chris, who holds him right back, who whispers bad puns and nerdy jokes he doesn’t pay attention to into his ears to distract him. Above them, the sun beats down from a cloudless blue sky, though he swears he hears the rumble of thunder in the distance, can smell the faintest tang of electricity through the honey and the pollen that mark spring on Blackwood Mountain.

The worst part is that Sam doesn’t even defend herself. Not when Emily yells at her, not when she abuses her or swears at her, not even when she slaps her, right across the face, leaving a big red handprint on her cheek. When Emily finishes, panting, she steps back and buries her face in Matt’s chest, bursting into fresh tears. Matt looks ready to do the same, and Mike just looks stony-faced, empty. Josh doesn’t understand, doesn’t comprehend any of this. He hardly even remembers; already he has forgotten the labyrinth of the mines, the twisting hunger that had made its home inside of him.

All he remembers is playing a dumb prank, and then nothing.

“I’m sorry,” he bursts out, not knowing what else to say. Logically, if the last bad thing to happen was his stupid prank, then maybe that’s what’s caused all of this. Logically, if the prank was the cause and he makes amends for the prank, he can make this all go away… right?

“It was a dumb prank… I’m sorry.” He looks around expectantly. No one says anything, but Mike looks like he wants to – like he is holding back curses, accusations, a lifetime’s worth of frustration and anger. To his credit, he holds it all in. They all do. Though he has a feeling this is not out of respect for him, but rather out of a greater anger – and from the display he has just witnessed, it is not difficult to surmise that this anger must be at Sam.

For what, he doesn’t know. And maybe it’s better if he doesn’t find out.

Sam steps up next to him, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “It’s not your fault, Josh. Okay? We just need to get home and get you your meds, okay?”

Josh nods meekly, and they walk onwards, leaving the others behind. He is so confused, he doesn’t even register if they follow. He just knows Sam is on his right, Chris is on his left, and they are his guardian angels in a sea of darkness.


	9. No Such Thing as Happy Endings

_When the sun rose, the rain stopped._

_Josh was awake, but he kept his eyes tightly closed; it just felt so nice, so luxurious to remain in bed, even if it was only for a few minutes more, to let the sun bathe him in warm light that makes him feel so light, so pure, it feels as if he is being reborn. He could hear the wing beats of birds flying overhead, their sweet voices as they call out to each other._

_He first realised he was not in bed when he felt someone get up beside him, heard their footsteps treading across marshy ground. Plop-thud, pull-suck, rinse and repeat._

_“Mike?”_

_It was Sam who spoke, her voice weak and tentative._

_“Don’t.”_

_“Mike, we have to get rid of the body –”_

_“Don’t call her that! Don’t you fucking dare, Sam.”_

_“Do you think I wanted this? I didn’t even want her to come, Mike! But what’s done is done. And we have to get rid of the… the evidence, okay?” Sam’s voice trembled; she was about to cry. Maybe she was already crying._

_They kept on like that for a while, fighting. Josh tried to tune it out, to focus on the buzz of the bees and the scuttle of small insects in the grass instead. Then all that was blocked by something larger, by the sound of something heavy being moved, half-dragged, crying (again), the same something being dumped, closer to him._

_“Don’t watch.” Sam’s voice, and then the insides of Josh’s eyelids turned a vibrant, translucent red, as if he was staring straight into the sun. The nauseating stench of burning gas pervaded his nostrils and the crackle of fire roared in his ears._

_"This isn't you," Mike muttered once the fire had died down. "This isn't Sam. You're a pacifist, you're the most moral person I know, you're _–”__

_"I'm desperate, Mike. And I'm not the same person I was a year ago, I know that. But neither are you. None of us are. We just have to hope that - that we can pick up the pieces, and maybe someday, maybe soon, be those people again."_

_*_

It’s a closed-casket ceremony. Not just because of the lack of a body, but also because that was just the way Jess would have wanted it.

Light pours through the church windows, the stained-glass turning the light into a rainbow of colour that bathes the building’s interior in warmth. The main doors are open and through them flows a warm breeze, ruffling Sam’s black skirt. Unperturbed, she stares straight ahead, eyes fixated on the coffin Jess’s parents had picked out; it is made of light, unmarred wood the colour of pale sand, with a smooth grain and a sleek varnish that glows slightly golden in the sunlight.

She can’t help but think how strange it is to know that that coffin is going to be lowered into the ground, that that coffin is supposed to represent Jess, to be a place to which they can go to mourn, to speak to her again, and that that coffin is completely, utterly empty.

Since it’s all just ceremonial anyway, they perform the prayers, give the obituaries, do whatever else it is that people do at funerals inside, all at the request of the deceased’s parents at the wishes of their daughter. The empty casket would be lowered into the soil later, after everyone had left.

After the service, Sam makes her way over to the refreshment table. She pours herself a plastic cup of sickly-sweet cordial, the taste cloying and unfriendly on her tongue, and forces herself to drink it. If she appears preoccupied, maybe no one will talk to her. Maybe no one will ask her why she hasn’t cried, not even a single tear, throughout the whole afternoon.

She doesn’t really feel like explaining that there are no more tears to shed, that she has already used them all up.

Sam’s phone buzzes in her coat pocket and she starts, frowning. Her heart jumps from her chest to her throat when she sees who it is.

_Mike:  
Meet me out back. We need to talk._

_*_

Mike leans against the soft red-brick of the church, playing with something in his right hand. His brow is furrowed, his eyes are puffy and rimmed with red. Aside from his spotless suit, all black with a black dress shirt buttoned right up to the collar, he looks distinctly unkempt, which is out of character for him. There is the shadow of stubble on his cheeks, and his hair, though slicked back with wax for the occasion, gleams faintly of grease and grime.

As Sam draws nearer, she can see that he is flipping an unlit cigarette about in his fingers. The sight makes her feel sick, ties knots in her belly. _Since when does Mike smoke?_

As she approaches, he tucks the smoke into his suit pocket, where it will probably make a mess, where it will be crushed and the tobacco will spill everywhere. Sam licks her lips; they’re dry as sandpaper.

“Hi,” she says, clearing her throat.

Mike looks up at her, his eyes endless dark tunnels that bore into her, that see right through her. She shifts her weight from one foot to the other, but nothing works. She still feels uncomfortable, out of place.

“I can’t forgive you,” he says, not taking those haunted eyes off of her for even a moment.

Sam swallows audibly. Her throat aches, and she has to fight to get the words out. “I know.”

“And I can’t forget, either.”

“I know that, too.”

He sighs, kicks at something with his foot and ends up scuffing the toe of his new dress shoes. Later, it’ll give his mother something to scream at him for, and right now it gives something Sam something to look at, so she doesn’t have to look at him and feel guilty.

“I just don’t know where to go from here. I’m furious at you, and at the same time I can’t say I would have done it any differently if I _were_ you. I used to be pissed at Josh, but that was before we found him. Now he just looks so pathetic, and he’s been so sorry since he got back on his meds, which makes me think that maybe _that_ – him being off his meds – was the whole reason for everything that happened in the first place, and how can I blame him for that when we’re his friends, when we should have noticed something? Fuck!” Mike kicks at the ground again, with the other shoe this time. Flakes of leather fall to the grass, little pieces of him.

“And through all that, I miss her, Sam. I – I love you, I love everyone even if you all piss me off so fucking much I could kill you sometimes, but I really, really loved her, and I –” His voice breaks as a single tear rolls down his cheek, catching in his stubble. “I never even got to tell her.”

Sam puts her arms around him, around this boy, this man who has given up so much to help her, who she has used and manipulated, and holds on tight, as tight as she can, as tight as she needs to in order to keep him from falling apart.

*

Together, they visit Josh in the hospital. Not just her and Mike – who hold hands sometimes, who stand on opposite sides of the room at others – but all of them. Even Emily and Ashley, though Em does nothing but sit sourly in the corner and Ash just stands around staring daggers at Chris, who sits on the edge of Josh’s bed, the paper sheets rustling underneath his hefty figure, the boy’s smooth brown hand grasped tightly in his own.

They barely fit, the room is so small – his father had requested a single room rather than a ward, and whatever Bob Washington requested was inevitably what happened – but they make it work, cramming into whatever available space there is, sitting on one another’s laps, on the edge of the bed. Chris even brought flowers, delicate yellow and white blooms that froth over the edge of their pink cellophane wrapping like sea foam.

“Flowers, Cochise?” Josh had asked sarcastically, raising an eyebrow and looking as if he were about to either burst out laughing, or crack a joke that would send the rest of them doing just that, depending on Chris’s response.

Chris did neither, only shrugged and set them down on the nightstand before sitting down on the bed. “Flowers,” he had nodded, and Josh had shrugged with a smirk, and that was that, though Sam noticed that his gaze kept sliding back to the bouquet that his hands would twitch every now and then, and she knew that he was just itching to hold them.

It's the first time she has really taken a good look at him since the rescue; at least, the first time she has been able to do so without the overhanging threat of imminent death looming over her shoulders. That can be a bit of a distraction. Now, though, there is nothing to distract her - nothing involving cannibalistic monsters, at least - so she doesn't take her eyes off of him,  taking this opportunity to study him with the observatory nature of a scientist, paying close attention to as much detail as possible.

There is nothing to suggest anything wrong, anything unnatural at all, nothing that alludes to the hell he has been living in for God knows how long. His skin has returned to its natural tone rather than the deathly pallor it had been before, his claws have been clipped neatly by hospital staff, and his eyes are bright and lively. He looks like the same old Josh, even smells like it, too, though that's because of the small bottle of his black tea and mandarin perfume Sam had brought to the hospital with her, rather than any natural odour. Everything is back to normal, aside from one thing: a faint, jagged line that extends from the left corner of his mouth halfway across his cheek, where his fangs had begun to protrude. And when he laughs, his incisors, slightly elongated and sharp as a razor, gleam wetly under the fluorescent lights, an ominous and permanent feature left behind after his possession.

Sam, who sits beside Chris, recounts the funeral – Josh had wanted to come so badly, but had been admitted instead on account of his extensive injuries – in as much detail as she can, making it sound pretty and light, glazing everything over with a coat of sugar. Emily looks like she wants to throttle her, but Mike’s presence between them prevents any such action.

“I think it was exactly how she would have wanted it,” Sam finishes.

By the end, Josh even cracks a few jokes. Admittedly, he stays a little farther away from that fine line between humour and being offensive that he used to tread so easily and overstep so often; now he keeps his wisecracks on the more conservative side (well, conservative for Josh, anyway), but it’s still a return to form, and one that eases a little of the guilt that has been haunting Sam for days, one that reassures her that this was all worth it. Maybe it isn’t the happy ending she was hoping for, but the twinkle in Josh’s eyes tells her it’s a damn good place to start.

She just wishes Jess could be here to see it. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! This is my first multi-chapter work, and although maybe it isn't as sprawling as I wanted it to be, I did put a lot of my time, effort, heart and soul into it, because I love these characters and I love their story and wanted to see it continued, especially Josh, who deserved so much better. I mostly wanted to explore the way these characters would have changed after their experiences, especially people like Sam - would they be able to retain who they are after such a traumatic event? I also apologise if anything is off, like the pacing or grammar - like I said, this is my first work of this nature, and it was also unbetaed. Thank you once again for reading, and if you have any feedback I would love to hear it!


End file.
